letter to Pride re: consensus

Hey.
(Is your feedback publicly visible? It should be so people can view feedback unless designated as private feedback).

I have read through your proposal, and it seems as though there's a problem. It seems as though you are implementing a system where people cannot vote at your general meetings ("collective member" status) without first going through an approval process. This is not allowed, basically.

In AMS code it says,
"Membership in all Resource Groups shall be open to all Active Members of the Society."

Membership means voting rights at general meetings, i.e. membership on a board of directors. Honestly, I'm not sure that having any restrictions to voting is permissible, but some resource groups have had restrictions of attending X meetings before voting. But if there are to be restrictions, they should be minimal.

I would recommend that you ditch your proposal of an "approval process" for voting rights at general meetings which requires a new member be voted in to "join the club".

I would also recommend getting rid of restrictions on voting at general meetings completely, to be honest. You can accomplish restrictions in other ways like restricting sub-committee membership, but making it difficult to vote at general meetings is wrong and prohibits new people from being as included. Not enough intake of new members == toxic recipe for incestuous resource group.

Currently your proposed restrictions on voting are:
- attend 3 or more general collective meetings in the term [carries to next term]
- be involved in one working group or committee in the last term
- completed collective skill training[in sept] in the last 2 years

I don't think any of these are justifiable, except maybe the last one. But the problem with requiring skills training to vote at meetings is that you're setting the hurdle for participation quite high. If you are not going to have skills training workshops on every week or two, then that means that people are effectively barred from participating until they have the chance to take part in an approved training session. This presents a functional and significant barrier to participation by "all Active Members of the Society [AMS]".
If you want to restrict who can exert power in the group, I suggest you find another way to do it than by creating a hierarchy of who can vote at general meetings and who cannot. I am pretty certain that this goes against rules governing the Resource Groups.

More AMS code:
The rules, regulations, and procedures of a Resource Group must ensure that it operates
democratically and must also ensure that only those members of the Resource Group who
are Active Members of the Society shall:

(a) exercise voting rights at Resource Group meetings and other Resource Group
   events; and
(b) hold Executive positions, or similar positions, within the Resource Group
----
This provision notwithstanding, a Resource Group may, in its constitution, limit, for
specifically defined groups of members:
(a) access to specific areas of that same Resource Group's space – or attendance at
     specifically defined events or activities (excluding general meetings) of that
    Resource Group – but only in the interests of preserving and protecting the
     mental, emotional, or physical security of other members of said Resource Group;

So, in other words, general meetings should be open and accessible to all, and it seems to go against the spirit and letter of AMS code to restrict voting (or "counting for consensus") at a meeting. I'm sure there is more code that talks about the importance of clubs and other AMS groups running democratically.

I also noticed in your document that there seems no way to override a block by a member when seeking consensus. Maybe this is the reason you chose to restrict membership and who can block a proposal? While it might sound nice to enable one person to block a motion, in practice it's not the most practicable. It's quite common for consensus-based groups to allow for voting of a 2/3rds majority if, after a period of discussion and attempt to arrive at consensus, consensus cannot be reached. At the SJC, our constitution governs the process of how consensus decision-making operates. Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gXTQ585iGvf8RSHwZm0IvPNMYOVyWT2BgCnArRcb5GQ (see Section "E - Procedure", subsection 3-d).
Basically this framework says that everything should be discussed and taken into account. It suggests that discussion should be the primary way of resolving differences, rather than going straight to voting. But it also prevents a single person from blocking a proposal. In practice, this is probably more sensible than requiring strict consensus on everything, but only from a select group of people who are allowed to block in the first place.

-Deniz